Glioblastoma vaccine: the result is positive
The results of the study, conducted with the participation of more than 40 patients in three cancer centers in the United States under the leadership of neurosurgeon Andrew Parsa from the University of California, San Francisco, were announced on Tuesday, April 17 at the conference of the American Association of Neurosurgeons held in Miami.
Glioblastoma is a rapidly progressive recurrent brain tumor. The five-year survival rate of patients with this disease is only 2%, even with the use of appropriate therapy. Treatment of glioblastoma usually begins with surgical removal of the affected brain tissue, after which patients undergo courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. However, as a rule, the tumor reappears, and often within a few months after the end of the course, and treatment begins from the beginning.
Several therapeutic antitumor vaccines were tried as an alternative treatment method, but none of them provided the development of a full-fledged immune response: they either destroyed only part of the tumor cells, or helped only some patients.
Dr. Parsa and colleagues suggested testing a new type of vaccine based on the use of heat shock proteins. These proteins are able to bind to tumor antigens and present them to macrophages, causing an effective immune response selectively directed against the tumor from which they are isolated.
On the basis of the tumor material obtained from the surgically removed participants of the clinical trial, Agenus specialists manufactured individual vaccines that were administered to patients according to a certain scheme.
A cohort of 80 patients who underwent standard courses of glioblastoma therapy in the same medical institutions was used as a control group. Standard therapy ensured the survival of patients for 32 weeks, while the use of an experimental vaccine – for 47 weeks. For several patients from the experimental group, this period was more than a year.
According to Dr. Parsa, the next stage of the work will be a larger randomized clinical trial, in which the effectiveness of the combination of the vaccine with avastin, traditionally used for the treatment of glioblastoma, will be evaluated in comparison with the effectiveness of avastin monotherapy. The start of inclusion of patients in this study is scheduled for the second half of 2012.
Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the University of California, San Francisco: Brain Cancer Vaccine Proves Effective.
19.04.2012